I say this even as my opinion directly contradicts the view of three learned university academics, the authors of the new university research study: “Dodgeball: Teaching Oppression in Physical and Health Education: A Feminist Perspective.”

Dodgeball is an educational ill, argue the professors, led by lead author Joy Butler, professor of curriculum and pedagogy at the University of British Columbia.

It’s against the principles of democracy, they say. It’s even a tool of oppression, they say, arguing that those who lose at dodgeball experience marginalization, powerlessness and helplessness: “Dodgeball and its intent to use humans as targets is tantamount to legalized bullying.”

It’s my contention that the professors have it dangerously wrong. Far from harming kids, dodgeball has much to teach us about how to succeed in life and the workplace.

Here are the game’s five biggest lessons:

Dodgeball is the most democratic of sports. For a sports that is supposedly so bad, folks sure do love it, as onlinepolls demonstrate. Why? Almost everyone has played dodgeball in school and almost everyone loved it or liked it. A wide variety of us can at least adequately play dodgeball, which is much more than you can say for most sports. You don’t need to be rich to excel at dodgeball. You don’t need expensive lessons or equipment. No one practices the sport much, so unlike most school sports everyone is on similar footing starting out. Yes, athletic kids have an advantage but tall ones and strong ones don’t necessarily triumph. Slower kids can play smart and hang in the game by keeping out of easy firing range. It’s one of the first places we learn that if we’re crafty, we can find our way to success.

It’s important to carefully weigh risks. Another dodgeball life lesson involves risk and reward. It often pays to rush up to grab loose balls, or to try to catch an opponent’s throw and thus eliminate him or her. But if you push too hard, your attempt to scoop or catch the ball will end with you being eliminated.

The best things in life are free. Dodgeball teaches us about how much fun we can have without spending much money. The sport is cheap, the price of a few cheap plastic balls, but it gets kids jumping, running, sweating and laughing. Where else do you find such bang for your phys-ed buck?

There are smart and safe ways to channel powerful human instincts. The genius of dodgeball is that it’s a safe but also satisfying. It’s a clever pantomime of the primal activity of hunting. Children get to play act at being both predator and prey, but without any bloodshed. It’s important to note that it’s this defining aspect of dodgeball that so offends the academics. They say it’s a moral problem to encourage students to aggressively single others out for dominance and to glory in the victory of a kill. Huh?! How did we get to the point where harmless play-acting is classified as a moral problem? The academics are confused. They inappropriately inject social justice thinking into the realm of games and play, and thus fail to grasp the innate safe-but-satisfying allure of the game, which is so enticing that even indolent kids wedded to their video games can be persuaded to play.

Authority figures don’t always get it right. For a long time, head shots were allowed in dodgeball. You could slam a ball into an opponent’s face, which would both eliminate, humiliate and harm the opponent. Some teachers might still allow this. But those teachers were wrong then and are wrong now. The lesson here isn’t that dodgeball is bad, it’s that sometimes authority figures get the rules wrong.

In the case of the current debate, the professors are authority figures. They’re the educational and curriculum experts with the power to influence curriculum for gym glass for entire provinces.

In this case, the danger is that they’ll be listened to and that schools will move towards eliminating an engrossing and healthy game from gym class. But if this happens in our public schools, if dodgeball and perhaps other competitive sports are banned, it will widen the gap even more between children.

Parents who know the many benefits of sports and competition will make sure to find schools or private programs where those things are emphasized, thus preparing their own children for the robust team play and complex competition of the real world.

But public school systems swept away in misguided, socially engineered attempts to reduce imagined victimization won’t prepare students, they will instead coddle them, a recipe for failure.

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